One way to sniff out good sales

A company with offices in Abu Dhabi specialises in creating smells designed to enhance the shopping experience and entice customers into stores. It may comes as a surprise that gorgeous aroma of freshly baked bread in some US bakeries is wholly artificial.

Companies use scent marketing for many reasons, says Saif Madhat, the managing director of ScentAir Mena. Razan Alzayani / The National

Many of its customers would never suspect it but the smell of baked bread wafting down the aisles of a Brooklyn supermarket is anything but fresh.
Sure, the store in question, Net Cost, sells bread. But the enticing smell is entirely artificial and originates from the air vents, not the bakery ovens.
The supermarket may be thousands of miles away in New York but the company that creates the enticing odour, ScentAir, also has an office in the UAE.
And it has reported a "tremendous growth" in so-called scent marketing since it opened.
"We have been here for two years and we have seen tremendous growth," says Saif Madhat, the managing director ScentAir Mena.
The trend started in the hospitality industry - the company's local clients include Jumeriah Beach Hotel - but it has since spread to the retail sector.
Shops including Zara Home, Lifestyle and Uterque now all use scent in their stores.
Companies use scent marketing for many reasons, says Mr Madhat.
Research has also proved scent can also be effective in encouraging people to buy.
"The odour needs to be congruent to the product," says Alan Hirsch, the founder and neurological director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago. A retailer cannot use the smell of baked bread to help it sell more shoes, whereas a combination of "leather, vanilla, baby powder and lemon" works, according to Mr Hirsch.
In clothes shops, fruity smells worked best on younger women, while floral scents were the most effective with more mature women.
Yet scent marketing does not work on everyone.
It tends to be more effective on women than on men, says Mr Hirsch. And it works less well on cigarette smokers. "Maybe the smell is more distorted to them," says Mr Hirsch.
But scent marketing is just one strategy in a long list retailers use to attract customers.
"They try to appeal to people by making it easy and try to make their products seem as desirable as possible," says Sarah Peters, the lead retail analyst at Verdict Research.
"The retail industry is very tough, so making it as easy for people to shop and making products look desirable is really important to all retailers at the moment," she adds.
Certain people, such as Carla Conte, help retailers stand out.
At her company, Brand Creative, a retail interior design company based in the UAE, her staff sit with every department from marketing to leasing to try to understand their issues.
She says common problems in the UAE include window displays that tend to not be very creative.
"There is a lack of good visual merchandisers here. In New York and London people who dress windows are really well paid and highly creative individuals.
"People wait all year for a Christmas window to be put up," adds Ms Conte.
It is not that window displays are not appreciated here. Louis Vuitton and other international retailers usually have enticing displays. But local companies do not always value them.
Emma Stinson, the owner of Studio Em, an interior design company based in Dubai, set up her business about a year ago.
She says her company, which designed a stand for a luxury Givori phone in Harvey Nichols in Dubai that featured a tree with gold leaves, has tried to do something a bit different in her displays.
"The product, obviously, has to be the thing that stands out but you are creating an atmosphere, which will set that product off.
"In places in London like Selfridges or Harvey Nics [visual merchandising is] like a piece of art, almost. Whereas here, it is not really seen that way."
Good window displays matter because they can help retailers stand out. And they have just 30 seconds approximately to grab the attention of someone walking past a shop.
"It's kind of like a frame, like a window frame of normal walking space," says Ms Conte.
"If you have not enticed a potential buyer walking into your store you have totally lost them. You have not done your job in the window. For [shoppers] it is the only way to communicate what you have on in the store," she adds.
But a store's work is not done when a customer is successfully enticed inside. The interior has to be set out in a way that makes it appealing to shoppers.
That means in shops targeting mothers, say, there should be enough space for a pushchair between the racks.
"I am ultra-sensitive about making the store super-comfortable for[shoppers]," explains Ms Conte.
"Like with aisle width and circulation space and making sure that there's no trip hazards and changes of floor. It's just kind of that comfort and ease and space kind of de-cluttering things is really important," she adds.
Research shows in general people veer to the right when they enter a shop and walk anti-clockwise through a store, which is why retailers work on making the right hand side "visually interesting" Ms Conte says.
And they also pay special attention to the first five metres inside a store.
"[Shoppers] will give you the benefit of the doubt and look through your clothes at the beginning of the shop and as they lose interest they will stop going through the racks and they will walk out," she adds.
But scent can also be handy in persuading customers to hang around.
ScentAir crafted a smell for a shoe shop, also in New York, which combines elements of the scent of wet concrete with lighter tea and citrus notes.
The retailer, which ScentAir refuses to name aside from to say it is a "rugged brand", uses the scent to improve the quality of the shopping experience.
"If you walk into a store that has a bad smell, the chance of you actually staying there is very little,' says Mr Madhat.
"If you create a pleasant environment for your customers to shop in, they will stay there," he adds.
And the longer they are there, the more opportunities there are to capture a sale - even if it is only a loaf of bread.
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